Nel (The Second Most Improbable Event)
by Ziltron
Summary: Leave your cannons (and semblances of plot) at the door.


Disclaimer:  
  
I do not own a monkey, a lizard, or the right to any Douglas Adams character, concept, or body part. Spare me a lawsuit and don't take this seriously.  
  
=====================================================  
  
Vailfare is a nice city to live in, but only if you go for that sort of thing. What sort of thing? Well, it would be a very nice place to raise a family. That is, if you don't mind raising a family amidst continual gang warfare, because there are a lot of those there. It's a real safe place for kids…if it wasn't for the amount of drugs that most of the kids seemed to be on. You could even get a real nice thoroughbred dog, if you don't mind the fact that he'll probably be stolen and sold to a seedy medicine testing facility. All in all, it would be a great place to live if it wasn't for all the people in it. The people are a motley bunch, running from this place to that, buying cell phones and automatic weaponry, taking the kids to school and fending off insurance salesmen with cudgels. Other than the random violence and crime, most of the citizens of Vailfare are fairly normal folks that just want to get home from work without running into a Jehovah's Witness biker gang.  
  
We are not concerned with the normal folks. This story is about someone even more strange than the accountant punk bands (trust me, you don't want to know). This is the story about Nel.  
  
A Fumeiryo Kekka Production  
  
"Nel"  
  
Chapter One: Mostly Harmless  
  
Now the morning was dawning over this mostly harmless city. The fairly normal citizens saw the dawn break and the sun rise. Nel saw the dawn shatter and the sun sink, do a triple lutz, and break into a stunning rendition of "Close to You" by the Carpenters. The normal folk ate bagels, drank coffee for breakfast, and read their newspapers inside their homes. Nel ate his newspaper, drank his bagel, and read his coffee outside of his neighbor's apartment. Reading coffee is much like reading tea leaves, only with one major disadvantage. You look for messages in the dregs of tea when you read tea leaves. In order to read coffee, you must spill it on your lap and look for messages in the stains.  
  
Nel wasn't actually intending to read his coffee. He was trying to steal his neighbor's thoroughbred terrier while eating the Sports section, when the dog knocked the cup of coffee out of his hands.  
  
"YARGH!" Nel cried, as he frantically tried to wipe the scalding liquid off of his pants.  
  
His neighbors (Mr. and Mrs. Hearn) heard their fellow man crying out, and responded in the best way that they knew how. Mr. Hearn grabbed the shotgun while Mrs. Hearn called the police.  
  
"This is the last time you'll try to steal my dog, Nel!" Mr. Hearn yelled as he pointed the mean-looking pump-action assault shotgun at Nel's head.  
  
"YARGH!" cried Nel. Thinking fast, he threw the terrier at Mr. Hearn. The little dog started to thrash wildly in the arms of his owner. Mr. Hearn swore and began to fire at random inside the hallway.  
  
Ned could hear the sound of approaching sirens. He ran past Mr. Hearn's now- depleted shotgun and dove out of a second story window, straight into a conveniently placed Dumpster. He curled into a tight little ball and waited for the cops to leave. In a few minutes, he could distinctly hear the sounds of a furious Mr. Hearn being dragged off.  
  
"But my dog! Nel! ARRGH!"  
  
"You are under arrest for reckless endangerment, disturbing the peace, ownership of heavy weaponry, and vandalism! You have the right to remain silent, anything you say or do can be used against you in a court of law," and so forth.  
  
Nel stifled a snigger of glee. He sat up on a large decaying mattress and began to think. Thanks to his belligerent neighbor, his entire day was shot. What could he do now? He decided to watch the decaying garbage for a while. That would alleviate the boredom.  
  
Looking down, he saw the coffee stains on his favorite black pants. Actually, he had seven or eight identical all-black outfits. This one was no different than the others. He just wanted an excuse to be even angrier with Mr. Hearn. Picking up a filthy rag, he began to scrub at the large brown spot on his lap.  
  
After about a minute of scrubbing, he noticed that some spots weren't coming out. He scrubbed harder. It almost looked as if letters were appearing. Tilting his head, he read them aloud.  
  
"W…E…A…P…"  
  
A few more minutes of scrubbing passed.  
  
"O…L…O…G…I"  
  
A few more passed.  
  
"Z…E…F…O…R…"  
  
And even more passed.  
  
"T…H…E…I…N…C…"  
  
This was getting tedious.  
  
"O…N…V…E…N…I…"  
  
There wasn't much stain left to rub. He knew he was close to the final message.  
  
"E…N…C…E!"  
  
It took a few seconds for the meaning of his coffee reading to dawn on him.  
  
"We apologize for the inconvenience?" he said.  
  
Slowly, he began to feel the most horrible sensation of déjà vu. It was like opening a fortune cookie, only to find something that you remember having said before. The mattress globbered in deep sympathy. Nel sat up like someone had shot him in the back. He had heard the mattress globber. He wasn't all together sure what globbering was, but he was darn well going to find out. Someone was playing silly boogers with him, and Nel would make him pay. A deep, primal, and previously unfelt sense of righteous rage moved through his veins, firing his soul and steeling his body.  
  
Then he thought, "Aww, what's the use? I'm too depressed," and took a quick nap.  
  
  
  
Chapter Two: Numbers  
  
Nel turned and twisted in his sleep. He writhed and flummoxed. He tangoed and waltzed. Finally, he awoke; considerably more tired than before. This nap thing wasn't working.  
  
"Perhaps if I slept in my bed?" he thought.  
  
This idea was worth pursuing, so he went back up to his apartment. Slowly, he climbed the stairs. Forty-two stairs later, he felt a sensation of panic. He realized that he had reached his floor, so he walked down the hallway to his personal living-cube. He reached his door and turned the key. As he glanced at the door, the number floated up at his eyes.  
  
Twenty minutes later, he was still staring at the two Arabic numerals.  
  
"42…"  
  
He pushed the door open and moved towards his bedroom. For some reason, the exact dimensions in yards came back to him: Six by Nine. Another wave of terror spread through his body. He sat down heavily on his bed. He looked over at his nightstand. His telephone sat on the worn wood. He had just move to this apartment, so he had written the number down on a little card: "276-791". Nel temporarily blacked out.  
  
When he came to his senses, he was lying face down in his kitchenette.  
  
"How did I get here?" he wondered.  
  
He stumbled over to a window to get some air. As he threw the shutters open, he knocked a bowl of petunias off the windowsill. He swore he could hear a voice say "Oh no, not again."  
  
This was when Nel went stark, gibbering mad. The level of insanity had passed even his super-human limits. He tore his shirt off, smeared his hair with honey, and ran through the streets of Vailfare screaming about dingo kidneys and white robots. The mostly harmless folks of Vailfare were quite taken aback by something so improbable.  
  
  
  
Chapter Three: ZZ9 Plural Alpha  
  
Fortunately for Nel, he was apprehended by the local police and put into mental rehabilitation. Nel's mental health was returned to a pristine state, except for his new habit of carrying a towel wherever he went. All was well indeed, until one summer day. Nel was taking a walk in Glastonbury. It was a pleasant day, and he felt like singing. Humming a little tune, he skipped along a dirt path.  
  
On a hillside, he saw a filing cabinet.  
  
"Now, this is odd," he thought.  
  
Getting closer, he saw that it wasn't merely a single filing cabinet. There were hundreds, no, thousands of cabinets, all lining the pastoral hillside. It was an awe-inspiring image.  
  
"There are enough cabinets to hold ten years of financial records for a successful branch of Ursa Minor Publications," thought Nel.  
  
Nel clamped his head over his ears. No, it was not large enough to hold records for a branch of Ursa Minor Publications. There was no such thing as Ursa Minor Publications. There was no significance to the number 42. It was only a perfectly normal collection of 1764 filing cabinets. It was just a coincidence that 42 was the square root of 1764. Very improbable, but a pure and simple coincidence. In fact, he was going to open a drawer to see what was in there.  
  
He edged his way towards the cabinet. He pulled open the drawer with a trembling hand, and pulled out a file. Stamped across the front was "1971 Financial Records, 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy', Ursa Minor Publications".  
  
He would only be seen once more. About an hour later, a girl reported having seen him outside a small café in Ricksmansworth. He reportedly scratched two messages into the store's glass window. They were two short, simple, and terrible messages. They read:  
  
DON'T PANIC  
  
And  
  
ZZ9 PLURAL ALPHA MUST BE MADE "PERFECTLY SAFE"  
  
  
  
This is, of course, called the second most improbable event in the history of the universe. It narrowly beat out the arrival of an earthman on the planet Magrathea.  
  
  
  
~Fin  
  
-----------------------------------  
  
Author's Notes:  
  
This story was a two-fold opportunity: Knock off an English assignment and do a fan fiction. The assignment was to write a story about a character. The fan fiction is a tribute to the improbability of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Merely a fun look at the events from a different perspective. It is nothing serious or important. So if you hate it, :P 


End file.
